


Furnace Room Lullaby

by damnslippyplanet



Series: Songs of Experience [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Emotional Idiots In Love, M/M, Okay we're on our way to resolving the UST here, an inquiry into practical limitations on sailboat sex, sometimes it's better not to know these things, the authoress has not investigated whether anyone has used sailboat frottage as a tag yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 14:04:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6472981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s worse than high school and the backseat of his shitty beater car, worse than the narrow dorm beds in college.  Not inappropriate, since they’re apparently going to rut in the tiny space like the horny teenagers Will and his then-partners had been when he’d found himself in both of those scenarios, but he’d sort of thought he might be past this particular stage of his life.</p><p>It’s almost as funny as it is frustrating, and he squirms a little lower to press a kiss to Hannibal’s temple, all he can reach with the man busy sucking livid marks over his carotid artery, before he groans, “This fucking <i>boat</i>, Hannibal, these <i>beds</i>, this is bullshit.”</p><p>The warm air of Hannibal’s slightly breathless laughter passes over his ear and makes him shiver again.  “We’ll steal a bigger boat next time. Any other requests?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Furnace Room Lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> Dear prompting anon who sent the song selection, I hope you're still out there and enjoy your fic, which believe it or not, I started out with the intention of it not being smutty and then...well, 2800 words later, here we are. Sometimes it's really hard to keep these two out of the sack in post-finale fic.

_ All night, all I hear, all I hear's your heart _

_ How come, how come _

_ ~ Neko Case “Furnace Room Lullaby” _

 

* * *

 

The last of Will’s stitches come out on an evening where the sunset spreads its last glowing  tendrils across the sky outside the cabin window, and the wind and water are calm enough that Will’s willing to let Hannibal near his face with sharp objects.

Hannibal’s going to take the first night watch so Will can get some sleep because he’s worn out. He’s a little punchy, half-asleep on his feet and vocally annoyed at how damn  _ chipper _ Hannibal manages to be while he’s one hand gesture away from taking out one of Will’s eyes with the small, sharp scissors.  Hannibal makes a little sound that’s a near-cousin to laughter, and holds Will’s face still.   Will resists, just barely, the urge to lean into Hannibal’s palm.  

“Hold  _ still _ ,” Hannibal chides, and there’s another snip and a tug, and then a satisfied little breath of a sigh. Hannibal keeps his hold on Will’s face and turns him gently this way and that, before he finally lets go with a nod.  “There.  Under the circumstances, you’ve healed quite nicely.”

Will runs his tongue cautiously over the inside of his cheek; there’s still some roughness where he imagines a patch of scar tissue, but Hannibal claims that will finish healing quickly.  He hopes so; right now it’s hard to keep from poking at it, like a kid with a loose tooth.  

Oddly, while he can’t seem to stop investigating the feel of his newest scar, he doesn’t particularly care about going inside to check it out in the mirror.  He’s seen it healing, and it’s not pretty but it’s not terrible either.  It’s just...what it is, and still finding its final form. Like so many things about his life, these days.

“Thanks,” he offers. Then, maybe because he’s only semi-awake and his rein on his tongue is looser than it might be, he asks, “Why did you really stop being a surgeon?  I know it wasn’t because you lost a patient, even though it’s a good story. And I can tell you were good at it.”

“I really did hate losing patients.  Taking a life isn’t at all the same as  _ losing _ one you hadn’t meant to let slip.  There’s no art in piecing together the human wreckage from your fiftieth car crash.”

Will can tell that’s about half a truth.  “And?”

“And I got bored,” Hannibal concedes, sounding amused.  “I was young and not as good at amusing myself within a structured life as I became later. I was looking for a change, and psychiatry provided new challenges.”

Will thinks about that for a moment and decides it sounds more or less like the other half of the truth.  “More chances to find interesting minds and twist them.  Much more fun than patching people up and sending them on their way, I suppose?”

Hannibal  finishes tidying the med kit away and says only, “You understand me better now than you used to.”  

“I suppose I do.”  Privately, Will doesn’t think that’s saying much.  After all, he used to think Hannibal was going to save him from the darkness of his own mind.  Once upon a time, back when a savior was still what he wanted Hannibal to be.

He tugs Hannibal away from the supplies and away from the train of thought, for his goodnight kiss. 

They fit together beautifully, with some practice under their belts now, warm and sweet and entirely chasing away the last bit of sting Will had been feeling from the stitch removal.  Will presses closer and feels heat stirring low in his belly, opens to the warmth and pressure of Hannibal’s tongue licking and pressing against Will’s own.

It’s been enough nights now that Will’s stopped counting.  Enough to learn precisely the contours of Hannibal’s mouth and the way his hands span Will’s hips.  The way Will always has to break first because he’s fairly sure Hannibal forgets entirely about the need for air.  Enough nights that he’s gone alone to his bed afterward and touched himself breathless and tried not to think about whether Hannibal can tell, when he goes to his own rest a few hours later.

Enough times to want more. 

Just…  _ enough, _ _ already, _ is what he finds himself saying, voice gone harsh and unrecognizable in his own ears.  He feels suddenly unmoored, as if the final snips and unravelling of the last few stitches accidentally unravelled something else.  Whatever was holding him back; whatever was making him  _ careful _ and  _ smart _ about this. He's suddenly not even the littlest bit sleepy anymore.

“Come with me,” the voice that’s barely his own says, thick in his throat, and he’s sliding down from his chair and tugging Hannibal with him.

“It’s my watch.”  Hannibal doesn’t sound like a man who cares at all about leaving their ship untended during the night.  It’s the most token of protests, and Will answers it precisely as seriously as it deserves by rolling his eyes and taking another step toward their beds.

“Let’s live dangerously,” he says, and feels the slight tug of the new, still-tender scar when he grins.  “You can start your watch in an hour.  Weather’s clear.  How much trouble can she get into unattended in one hour?”

Hannibal’s hands are back at Will’s waist but finding their way under his shirt now, warm and rough with newly formed calluses from their days at sea.  He looks at Will as if he’s seriously considering eating him. The fact that Will knows precisely what that looks like  _ really  _ shouldn’t be a turn-on, and yet electricity licks down his spine. 

At least he knows without a doubt that there are no bone saws on board. He checked, during the first chance they had to do inventory.  

“You gave me such a stern lecture on the dangers of leaving the ship unattended overnight,” Hannibal says, entirely unconvincingly.  “An unexpected collision. Unpredictable weather.  Limited visibility.  I  _ suppose," _ he adds with a flash of teeth and a bright gleam in his eyes, “there could be sharks.”

Will’s fairly certain he never threatened Hannibal into vigilance with the possibility of  _ sharks _ .  He’s almost tempted to send Hannibal up to carry out his watch after all, in retaliation for that particular piece of nonsense.  Almost; not quite.

“If a shark shows up in the next hour,” he says with another step toward the berths -  _ Hannibal’s, _ he decides on a whim, and steers them both in that direction - “we’ll tell it to go away and come back later.”

He pulls Hannibal in to him for another series of kisses, longer and deeper and he’s pretty sure that at some point Hannibal licks at the inside of his cheek to feel for the place the stitches came out, just as Will’s been doing on and off for the last ten minutes.  He’d complain about the slight soreness but, well, his mouth is full of Hannibal’s tongue.

Instead, he slides his own hands over Hannibal’s chest and stomach, exploring warm skin and the last of Hannibal’s bandages and the softness of three years with minimal chances to use or keep muscle.  It’s not that he hasn’t touched before when they’ve kissed, but not this freely. Not without a pretty firm sense of where - or if - he plans to stop. 

Hannibal’s heart thumps under his hand like a barely-caged wild thing. He imagines for a dizzy moment that he could curl his fingers inward, reach under Hannibal’s skin, and press that racing pulse against his palm. Stroke its slick red surface with a finger and watch it shudder and try desperately to keep rhythm. 

The thought makes him feel slightly desperate, his skin prickly-hot all over.

Whatever they’re doing here could be a  _ lot  _ more dangerous than sharks.

He breaks away only to find himself panting in a way that would be completely embarrassing if Hannibal weren’t doing the same.   _ Fuck, oh fuck,  _ flashes through his mind. He doesn’t say it.  Doesn’t have the faintest clue if Hannibal would like it, if he did. Because of course they haven’t had any of those conversations he meant to have.  Those sensible conversations, about intentions and boundaries and past experiences and --

They hit Hannibal’s flimsy mattress hard in a tangle of limbs and kisses and hands that drives breath from Will’s lungs, and thoughts about sensible conversations out of his head. Clothes hit the floor - most of them Will’s, Hannibal still seems to be operating under the theory that if he can’t have three-piece suits he doesn’t see any point in wearing much clothing at all.

Will falls back and the solid weight of Hannibal’s body over him and pinning him down is both new and welcome.  An experimental wriggle to see if he  _ could _ get away, even though he doesn’t want to, turns into a breathy moan and his thighs slipping further apart to let Hannibal settle more firmly between them, in a sudden shock of entire expanses of bare skin touching all at once.

And then Will does say _fuckoh_ _fuck_ all in a single word. His voice rises on the final syllable like it’s the vocal line written expressly for the driving drumbeat of Hannibal’s heart, like they’re making music together.  

_ "Will," _ Hannibal says, and that’s music too, the strain in it.  “Tell me. Show me. What do you want?”

Showing. Yes. God, he can  _ do _ that. And does, the easy closeness that’s grown up between them over weeks of carefulness making it easy to dispense with shyness or nerves.  He rocks his hips up, and pulls Hannibal down into the curve of his throat, where he  _ could _ tear the life out of Will  _ like Francis oh god oh fuck  _ but where he  _ won’t, _ because that’s not what this is about.  

Hannibal can take a hint, apparently; he goes to work finding the spots on Will’s jaw and throat that make him shiver and sigh.  Will rocks his hips up harder, finding that perfect sweet and slightly unbearable friction where they can rub together, and tries hard not to let the motion throw them off the narrow mattress entirely.  

It’s worse than high school and the backseat of his shitty beater car, worse than the narrow dorm beds in college.  Not inappropriate, since they’re apparently going to rut in the tiny space like the horny teenagers Will and his then-partners had been when he’d found himself in both of those scenarios, but he’d sort of thought he might be past this particular stage of his life. 

It’s almost as funny as it is frustrating, and he squirms a little lower to press a kiss to Hannibal’s temple, all he can reach with the man busy sucking livid marks over his carotid artery, before he groans, “This fucking  _ boat, _ Hannibal, these  _ beds, _ this is bullshit.”

The warm air of Hannibal’s slightly breathless laughter passes over his ear and makes him shiver again.  “We’ll steal a bigger boat next time. Any other requests?”

Will has a lot of requests, honed into embarrassingly fine and vivid detail over a series of lonesome evenings that, if he’s being perfectly honest with himself, predated Francis Dolarhyde’s death. But he contents himself for the moment with a wriggle and something like a shimmy, until he’s twisted out from Hannibal’s grasp enough that he can roll them over, narrowly avoiding banging his elbow on the cabin wall, until Will’s on top, stretched long and loose-limbed over Hannibal so he can see him properly.

This is good, too.  Yeah, there’s something to be said for this vantage point, he thinks, with an experimental roll of his hips until he finds it again, the place where they slot together perfectly and can begin an achingly slow, hard, hot-sweet grind against each other.  He can control the pace better here, and there’s heat in the thought of that - setting the pace, making Hannibal wait, taking him apart slowly and learning how to put him back together again. 

Not that it would take much, apparently - Hannibal’s eyes are wide and intent and locked on to Will now, his breath stuttering in sharp little punches with each roll and thrust Will makes against him, and that caged-bird flutter of his heart is a runaway thrumming now that Will can feel where his hand presses to Hannibal’s chest.  All that racing blood raging through Hannibal’s body for him. Because of him.  

It’s almost too much to take in, if he let himself really understand what this is doing to Hannibal.  That Will would allow this; that he would ask for it.  That he would, god help him, enjoy it.  Which he does, and if there were any doubt about that, it vanishes when Hannibal reaches for Will’s hips and  _ moves him _ just a little harder and faster, and Will sort of...goes away, for a minute.  Loses his mind briefly, maybe, in a way that’s thoroughly embarrassing for the relative tameness of what’s going on here, but it’s more about the simple fact of being  _ handled _ that way, which he’s never really had and apparently he  _ really  _ fucking likes.

_ “Oh," _ is all he can say to that particular revelation, “ _ please, _ like that,” and then the slow climb to completion is abandoned in favor of a race.  They push each other, carry each other, drive each other forward into that place they’re seeking together, hot and hard and revelatory.

Hannibal’s been behind bars for three years; Will’s been anticipating this for a while now.  There was never any chance this was going to last long, and it doesn’t.  Will manages to hang on just long enough to find out what it sounds like when Hannibal sighs Will’s name reverently as he comes.  There’s a certain familiarity to the way Hannibal says it that Will just  _ knows, _ the way he knows things, means it’s far from the first time that’s happened.  It’s just the first time Will’s actually been there to hear it.  He loses himself a few moments later, his own sounds muffled against Hannibal’s shoulder where he’s buried his face in a futile attempt to hide from too much sensation.

Somehow, in the aftermath, the bed doesn’t bother Will nearly as much.  When they’re not trying for anything more goal-oriented than skin contact and slow kisses, it’s no real trial to be pressed together so closely.  They’re sweaty and sticky and Will makes a vague note that the next boat they steal should also have better showering facilities if this is going to become a thing, but still, right now it’s okay.  Better than okay.

Will means to say something about finding a place to go ashore tomorrow, to stay overnight on dry land with beds that fit two and don’t periodically heave and sway with the swell of ocean waves.  He means to find his feet again at least long enough to peek out the window to make sure they didn’t miss out on a hurricane or a shark while they were distracted. He means to do a lot of things.

All he seems to be able to do in reality, though, is to listen to Hannibal’s heart finally slow in its headlong race until it’s something approaching steady again.  And then he traces his fingers slowly over Hannibal’s ribs, and listens to it pick up again, subtle but noticeable. He stops, and after a long moment, hears Hannibal’s heart rate slow.  Apparently with a little concentration, and a quiet enough room, he can play Hannibal’s heart like a musical instrument.

He knows exactly what Hannibal would say if he voiced that thought -  _ you always could _ \- and he’s not quite ready to hear that much truth at this exact moment.  Instead he just finds enough of his voice to mumble, “Stay a few more minutes?”

Hannibal’s hand strokes steady and soothing over Will’s shoulder and down his spine, lulling him even further into sleepiness.  “As long as you’ll let me,” he says, with his voice rumbling under Will’s ear and then lapsing back into silence so Will can listen to his heartbeat, a mostly-steady metronome now that follows Will into sleep.

He wakes a few times during the night, surfacing to find himself still held warm and close in the tight space between Hannibal and the wall, still wrapped in Hannibal’s arms and the comfort of his heartbeat.  Every time he means to get up, or to prod Hannibal to get up, and go up on deck.  He just can’t quite seem to do it; can’t seem to care about or quite believe in the world outside of the cabin.

Maybe they’ll drift entirely off-course and end up somewhere neither of them intended. Maybe that’s just fine.  Will closes his eyes again and slips back into dreams.


End file.
